Determinism means that you were not the creator of the circumstances that led to the decision you made. So, in a sense, it does make it not really "your" decision.
It's really hard to convincingly counter all possible objections in just a few lines. The above was meant to give an instance of a hypothetical list of "things rationalists believe and why", not something that could replace an actual sequence . Obviously you one cannot hope to clear up all possible confusion in so short a post.
If I were to make a serious terse post about free will, I'm thinking I would at least have to take some time to try and dissolve the concepts of 'identity' and what it means to be 'responsible' first. This would still keep...
I like posts that are concise and to the point. Posts like that maximize my information/effort ratio. I would really like to see experienced rationalists simply post a list of things they believe on any given subject with a short explanation for why they believe each of those things. Then I could go ahead and adjust my beliefs based on those lists as necessary.
Sadly I don’t see any posts like this. Presumably this is because of the social convention where you’re expected to back up any public belief with arguments, so that other people can attempt to poke holes in them. I find this strange because the arguments people present rarely have anything to do with why they believe those things, which makes the whole exercise a giant distraction from the main point that the author is trying to bring across. In order to prevent this kind of derailment, posters tend to cover their arguments with endless qualifications so that their sentences read like this: “I personally believe that, in cases X Y Z and under circumstances B and C, ceteris paribus and barring obvious exceptions, it seems safe to say that murder is wrong, though of course I could be mistaken.” The problems with such excessive argumentation and qualification are threefold:
By contrast, terseness makes posts more readable and makes it less likely that the main point is misunderstood. So if we as a community could just relax the demand for argumentation and qualification somewhat, and we all focussed on debating the main points of posts instead of getting sidetracked, then perhaps experienced rationalists here could write nice and concise posts that give clear and direct answers to complicated questions. Instead, some of the sequences are so long and involve so many arguments, counter-arguments and disclaimers that I feel the point is lost entirely.